She lifted up her head at that and pushed back the hair from her eyes.
"But not one that can come near him, father."
"Well, well; I never did understand the twists and the turns of you women, and I never shall, as I told your poor mother most every day of her life. He's such a woman, sings the lass one minute, and the next——"
"So he is," quoth Greta, and ran from the room to tidy herself.
And all this, as has been said, bothered Griff Lomax no little. He felt like a father to these two young people, and had set his heart on their making a match of it. He was in and out of the mill a good deal; old Rotherson took kindly to him, and Greta grew to regard him in the light of a hail-fellow-well-met sort of comrade, who showed no disposition to make love, and who was yet willing to serve as a friendly basis of jealousy when the occasion demanded it.
And all the while Griff never once guessed that he was himself walking—nay, running—into deep waters. The mother and he went very often across the three miles of moor that lay between Marshcotes and Peewit House. Almost as often Kate Strangeways walked to the Manor; sometimes she sat by the parlour fireside, with her hands in her lap, enjoying the sensation of being thoroughly idle; sometimes she played the model in the snug little studio upstairs, and watched Griff as he plied his brushes. True, he had asked permission simply to paint her portrait; but he wanted more than that—and, wanting it, contrived in his usual headstrong way to obtain it. There was no trace of self-deception in his enthusiasm for Kate's strong, lithe type of beauty. It was with an artist's zeal that he seized this and that new pose, or altered expression; and if he was gentler with her after the fatigue of posing, more solicitous that she should not tire herself unduly, than was altogether necessary—well, how could he help it, when he had, in very fact, been searching after this treasure-trove of his ever since he took to painting?
Mrs. Lomax buzzed in and out of the studio while they were at work, and was disposed to blame Griff for what she called his callousness in the matter of his model's welfare; at times she even went so far as to be indignant that the boy could be so blinded by his art as to lose sight of the good red gold that lay beneath the surface of Kate's quiet manners. But she never stopped to picture what must happen should Griff once dig down to the gold and set his heart on wealth that belonged to his neighbour.
Only Roddick guessed which way the wind was blowing, and he kept his opinions to himself. Griff would ride over to Wynyates two or three times a week, and he rarely left without a word or two about the woman who lived across the moor.
"Across the moor she lives, do you say?" Roddick had asked, with a start, the first time Griff had mentioned her.